


The Jewel of California

by serendipitee



Category: GOT7
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Anal Sex, Bottom Im Jaebum | JB, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Park Jinyoung/Son Hyunwoo, Recreational Drug Use, Sexuality Crisis, Top Mark Tuan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 08:55:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16829278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serendipitee/pseuds/serendipitee
Summary: Oh, I wanna tiptoe through your bliss boy,Get lost the more I find ya— Troye Sivan, “Lucky Strike”





	The Jewel of California

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Tell Me Good Boy Bottom Jaebeom Fic Fest - Prompt 99: non-idol!verse Jaebum is confused about his sexuality and Mark offers to fuck him “just to make sure he’s straight”

“Okay, so...I know I haven’t gotten laid in a while but — ”

Mark’s already unamused, somehow, despite Jaebum only being half a sentence in. “Can’t you make other gay friends to ask this stupid shit to?” Maybe asking in the middle of a Spyro game wasn’t the most well-thought-out idea Jaebum’s ever had.

Jaebum huffs, then burps. It smells like Natural Light. Mark’s room is dark and only the two of them are in it, because even though Mark agreed to let Jackson throw a party, Jaebum and Mark are both “boring, introverted, hostile-looking slugs at parties sometimes.” Bass is thumping hard enough to shake the bedroom door on its hinges. Jaebum is sure their crotchety old neighbor from downstairs is bound to call the police soon. Before that happens, he needs Mark’s advice on this.

“How do you know it’s gonna be stupid?”

Mark sighs and his aggravation is only one of those surface-mad types. He’s only irritated, not actually pissed at his best friend’s bumbling questions. “Because you’re stupid.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

Jaebum sticks his tongue out in a very grown-up manner. “Mark, seriously though.”

His best friend pouts in the blue light cast off by the television. “I don’t know what you want me to tell you, Jaebummie,” he sighs. It makes something in Jaebum’s stomach roll and sour, hearing him like that. Maybe he’s being too selfish. “Dude, you made out with Hyunwoo and Jinyoung on a dare and you liked it. It doesn’t have to be soul-crushing to like kissing boys.”

“But I.” But until that party Jaebum had never really imagined kissing boys, and now maybe he cannot stop thinking about kissing boys. All kinds of boys. All the time. Maybe it makes him panic, thinking of what kind of Pandora’s box he opened by stumbling into the closet with his huge, good-looking, soft-hearted gym buddy and his gym buddy’s startlingly handsome boyfriend, the two of whom gave him the plushest, softest kisses he’d ever felt. “I’ve never….”

“I know.” Mark has been out since high school. He’s never been afraid of anything, and that’s part of why Jaebum attaches himself like a leech to him as a hyung, because he’s afraid all the time. Of everything — failing out of university, disappointing his parents, falling ill, being lonely. Being something besides straight. It’s all terrifying.

Mark drops his head onto Jaebum’s shoulder. “Straight boys can make out with other boys sometimes, it’s not the end of the world. Or of your sexuality.”

Jaebum pets his fingers absently through Mark’s hair, downy soft and spun gold since the last time he dyed it. “You’re right. I guess I just get caught up wondering. You know?” He flicks the opener tab on his beer. “Like. What if.”

“What if,” Mark echoes, sounding amused. He nuzzles into Jaebum’s neck, accidentally nosing against a sensitive spot under his jaw that makes him jump and chuckle. Something in his belly tightens, hand going still in Mark’s hair while he tries to ignore the insistent, low voice in the back of his head tempting his thoughts through a doorway he usually tries to keep locked tight.

“Yeah,” Jaebum agrees, nonsensical, blabbering. It feels like he’s turned down a dark road and a headlight just went out; like he started the conversation knowing where he was going and somewhere along the line completely lost the plot. “Like I’m pretty sure I’m not gay according to my calculations.”

“Gays are bad at math, so you definitely can’t be gay.” Jaebum can feel Mark smirking against his throat. His stomach swoops. “Unless your calculations are wrong.”

Jaebum’s heart punches hard against his ribs. “Yeah, I — ” His voice sounds oddly high to his own ears. “Maybe I need to do the math again.”

Mark pulls away. His face is half shadow, half light from the Spyro pause screen. “Or I could just fuck you.”

Jaebum jolts, laughing, chest tight. “Yeah, okay, sure, Mark.” He watches something flash across Mark’s face and behind his eyes, but it’s gone before he can figure out what it is. “That’s the only way to find out, right?”

He nods solemnly, quirking an eyebrow. “I didn’t know I was gay for sure until I was surrounded by dicks that one time in San Francisco.”

Jaebum groans. “Please, no. No. No, I don’t want to hear this again,” he laughs, covering his face and then Mark’s mouth as he gears up to yell a story he’s heard a thousand times from him and Jackson already. The warmth in his gut settles into something familiar and safe and for now, he can take a break from this crisis, happy next to his best friend who loves him no matter how dumb he is.

Somehow, it becomes a joke between them: casually, the morning after the party, Mark asks if he’s still curious enough to want a dick in his ass. Jaebum is hungover and sore from sleeping on Mark’s floor and still manages to catch Mark in an armbar long enough to make his face go red with laughter. He punches at Jaebum’s thigh with sharp knuckles and cackles when he whines and lets him go.

Every now and then, Mark innocently mentions how you shouldn’t knock it till you try it. Jaebum will sigh back, saying “if only I knew someone who would help me ‘try it’.” 

Sometimes, it makes Jaebum’s stomach feel funny. Every now and then, Mark will hold his gaze a beat too long after saying “maybe you have a friend who could help you investigate,” slow smile spreading over his face. Jaebum swallows hard, after those moments, feeling like he might be near some huge, deep hole in his mind, like he’s toeing the edge of a big, dark, frigid lake.

It’s worth it, to see the smirk on Mark’s face, to know it’s another part of himself that he only shares with Mark because they’re so close. That he knows what he’s struggling with, and he genuinely would do whatever Jaebum asked because that’s the kind of hyung and friend he is.

“Still need someone to fuck you out of being confused?”

Jaebum chews on his pencil eraser, barely even glancing up as Mark drops his romantic language linguistics book on the table. “Nah, not today. Maybe tomorrow.”

Jackson was not privy to this comedy routine until this very second. This explains the way his eyes are the size of dinner plates. “Wait, what the fuck?” he asks, then, shrieking: “Are you two _banging?_ ”

“No,” Jaebum explains, holding his finger to his lips in a shushing motion. “Stop yelling, we’re in the library, you dumbass.”

“Then what the hell did I just hear?” Jackson whispers, loudly. “God, I can’t believe this. Mark’s settling on a straight guy. I thought you were smarter than this.”

“Shut the fuck up, Jackson,” Mark says in his most placid, calm tone. He flips a page in his textbook harder than necessary.

Jaebum shrugs. “It’s just a joke. It’s funny.”

“Funny ‘haha’ or funny ‘weird’?” Jackson shakes his head. “I don’t know about your odd straight-people humor, but this definitely falls in the second category for me.”

“Relax,” Jaebum grits out, irritability rising. “What does this even have to do with me being straight?”

“Uh, I don’t know,” Jackson says in complete irony, like his thought process should be obvious to Jaebum, who is not a mind-reader. “Maybe the fact that I’m at least 50 percent gay and I’ve never joked about fucking Mark. Maybe you actually w — ”

Mark cuts off whatever his roommate was gonna say next. “Jackson.”

Jackson clams up. The power Mark has over both of his idiot best friends is impressive. “Whatever,” he mumbles. “It’s still weird.”

Jaebum chews on the inside of his bottom lip, uneasy and slightly pissed off. It’s annoying for Jackson to just waltz in on his high-horse thinking he understands just because he’s bisexual, just because he and Mark have been roommates forever. Jackson is smart and a good friend too but sometimes he just doesn’t get it; Mark and Jaebum operate on a different frequency than Mark and Jackson. 

He returns to his music theory notes in silence as Mark and Jackson bicker back and forth in Mandarin, pace too fast for Jaebum to understand what little useful vocabulary Mark’s tried to teach him. The swirling jumbled confusion in his head now would make it too hard to parse it out anyway.

“Okay, Christ,” Jackson huffs after it seems they’ve decided something, defeated. “My bad. Jaebum, I’m sorry I called you weird.” 

“I don’t care,” he lies. “And lower your voice, asshole.”

Jackson pouts.

Mark exhales on the most long-suffering sigh Jaebum’s ever heard. “Be nice. Jack was gonna invite us to a fencing team party.” 

Fencing team parties have the same amount of stupid depravity that any college party has only with the added benefit that if they go with Jackson, none of them have to spend a cent to get shitfaced drunk. The team has a stockpile of alcohol that could drown the entire West Coast. And there’s always girls from the volleyball team there, all tall and tan and beautiful enough to get his mind off of things.

Jaebum considers for a second. “I forgive you.”

Jackson beams.

\--

This fencing party goes about as well as planned: it’s only 11:30 and Jaebum is drunk in the kitchen, alternating between small talk with some familiar girls from the art department and watching Jackson hold court with his rotating cast of friends and admirers. Mark is off somewhere probably smoking weed; he disappears into the ether like that sometimes. 

Jackson takes a break from being the center of attention to skip over and grin at Jaebum where he leans against the counter with mischief in his eyes. “Shots?” he suggests, wiggling the bottle of tequila in his hand and shaking his hips in time with it. 

Jaebum laughs. “Tequila? So it’s that kinda night, huh.” He doesn’t stop Jackson from pouring the twin shots though, head mushy from the beer and jungle juice he’s already chugged down, keen to actually socialize and hang out and maybe get into trouble. Down the rabbit hole.

“Yes,” Jackson declares with an air of grandeur, “a night of utterly uncivilized debauchery.” He holds up a shotglass to Jaebum and spills some of it over the edge in his haste to do a toast with him. “Cheers! Here’s to bad decisions.”

Jaebum clinks, and goes to throw back the shot but in the upward arc he catches two pairs of eyes, each smug and pleased in different parts. He promptly chokes on the alcohol, tequila splashing into his sinuses and catching in his throat, burning into all the sensitive mucous membranes. 

Jackson cackles at him but claps his back as he coughs. “Aw, bro, you good? Need a glass of water?”

“Fine,” Jaebum chokes out, rubbing the spit off of his mouth with the back of his hand, “I’m fine, just gotta — ” He makes the mistake of looking up again, right into Jinyoung and Hyunwoo’s worried faces, their open concern and the way their hands are tied together, unabashed, obvious, unrepentant. His face burns in humiliation. “Just gotta find Mark.” He nudges Jackson out of the way in a rush, delving into a sea of humanity in the hallway, trying to escape.

Panic creeps up his throat during his search of the first floor, a blur of faces passing by, not one of them recognizable. His throat is still pricking and sore and the inside of his nose is tingling unpleasantly. On the way up the stairs, though, Jaebum can make out a familiar skunky scent. He clomps up the last few steps and throws open the first door at the landing.

Bambam's the first one he sees through the hazy air, looking like a deer in headlights. Then he squints and sees that it’s Jaebum and his face turns to pure irritation. “Dude, close the door! You’re gonna let the jocks in and the weed out.”

“Hi hyung!” his boyfriend Yugyeom cheers from underneath him, long arms wrapped around his tiny waist. He’s one of the Korean exchange students Jaebum used to begrudgingly mentor. The other is on the other side of the room, sitting peacefully cross-legged on a stranger’s bed with an unbelievably large bong in his lap.

“Jaebum-hyung,” Youngjae says in slow, lilting satoori. “Hey, you okay?” The fellow music major looks concerned even through his lidded eyes. 

Jaebum hadn’t realized it, but he’s breathing hard and when he goes to run a hand down his face it’s shaking like a leaf. “Have you seen Mark?” His tongue lolls uselessly, out of practice with his own native language. He feels like he’s going crazy.

“Yeah, he’s in the bathroom….Hyung, you don’t look so good. Maybe you should sit down.”

Mark emerges from the en-suite, cheeks flushed, eyes an irritated red, hair messy. “Jae, that shit is fucking brutal. I almost just sent the riskiest text to — Jaebum?” He must recognize the cowed, terrified look in his eye, because he straightens right up and strides across the room in a millisecond and wraps a hand around his shoulder and the other around the side of his neck. He’s holding Jaebum together, literally. In the cup of Mark’s palm he can feel his own heartbeat hammering. “What happened? Are you okay?”

“I — ” He starts, gut clenching at just how small his voice sounds in front of all of his younger friends. “I don’t want to ruin your night,” he says, mumbling, continuing when Mark shakes his head. “Sorry, I just. Don’t feel good. Will you walk me home?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Mark agrees, soft like no one else is around, like he’s approaching a skittish horse and not his best friend having an anxiety attack. Although, unfortunately, there may be similarities right now — like how he wants to run away as fast as he can. He pulls on his jacket and rubs between Jaebum’s shoulder blades as they leave the room. “Let’s go home.”

\--

“You want to tell me what happened yet?”

Jaebum picks at the fraying bottom hem of his sweatpants. They’d dressed all nice to go out, the two of them, but then Jaebum freaked and when he and Mark got back to his shitty studio the first thing Mark did was demand a set of comfy clothes. Jaebum threw a giant shirt and a pair of joggers at him and then changed himself, relaxing even in the small process of taking off a pair of too-tight jeans. 

He thinks that maybe that was Mark’s point.

Mark isn’t even looking at him to get the full effect of his pout right now; he’s still watching the _Gundam Wing_ episode he’d booted up on Jaebum’s laptop, balancing it on his stomach.

“It’s embarrassing,” Jaebum mumbles.

Mark gives him a Look. It says something like _as embarrassing as seeing your hentai porn search history?_

“Ugh,” Jaebum relents, nudging Mark with his elbow. “Fine. I saw Jinyoung and Hyunwoo at the party as I was taking a shot and — ” He sighs as Mark’s eyebrows rise over his forehead. “And I got one good look at them and basically accidentally blew tequila out of my nose.”

“Holy fuck, that _is_ embarrassing,” Mark says, ignoring the glare that he gets in return. He drums his fingers on his chest and pauses the anime, pushing the laptop closed and away so he can fully look at Jaebum. “But like.” He seems to mull over the right way to phrase the next part. “I know you’re anxious, Jaebum, but this seems like it’s not just about that. Or, them, I mean.” 

Jaebum sighs, hiding behind his hands. “It’s not.”

Mark’s silence is a question.

“I think,” Jaebum says, voice shaky, heart in his throat. “I think...I’m pretty sure I like guys the same way I like girls,” he whispers hoarsely. “Like. All the time.” Not just when he’s drunk, or high, or horny; not just when he’s on a dare, and not only when he’s trying desperately not to think about it, when he’s feeling a zap of tension in an otherwise normal friendship.

This is the first time he’s ever said it out loud.

Mark inhales a sharp, short breath. “Oh.” Then, immediately, his hand is folding on top of both of Jaebum’s, pulling his fingers away from his face. He meets Mark’s eye more shyly than ever before, but all he sees looking back is Mark’s warm, accepting glow. He presses a hand down against Jaebum’s sternum as if to tell his heart directly _I know how you feel and I’m here_.

This whole thing is really serious, Jaebum realizes, the corners of his eyes wet. Too serious. Too much of Mark’s quiet, pointed, all-encompassing attention. So he cracks a joke: “Although, there’s really only one way to find out, right?”

Mark blinks in surprise, then grins, sharp canine popping, a serrated look in his eye. “Well, that’s certainly true. Do you want someone to help you decide?” The deep dip of his tone carries a weight it never has before. He means it. He looks like he wants to —

“Yeah,” Jaebum breathes before he can help it, decidedly too eager, tripping over himself. Mark’s smile widens to shit-eating proportions; he knows he’ll be made fun of for this later.

“Good,” Mark says, poking him in the side and badgering him to sit up straight. Then, all of a sudden, he’s in Jaebum’s lap, arms wrapped around his neck like a koala, knees on either side of his thighs. He stares at Jaebum expectantly, not looking away when his cheeks go rosy-hot.

Jaebum coughs awkwardly. His hands fall to Mark’s hips. “I guess we should. Kiss?” he tries. Mark looks like he’s trying really hard to hold a laugh in so he lunges forward, startling him into loud giggles. “Quit laughing at me, you dick.”

Jaebum feels fingers pinch around the apple of his cheek and tries to bite them off of the offending hand. “Jaebummie is so cute,” Mark coos. His warm weight in Jaebum’s lap isn’t entirely unfamiliar; they’re best friends who drape over each other often enough that this act in itself loosens the hot, tight knot in Jaebum’s chest just the smallest bit, feeling Mark’s unselfconscious way of moving around on top of him. “Do you _want_ to kiss?”

Jaebum freezes up completely.

Mark shakes his head like he expected this reaction. “Jesus, Jaebum. Take a deep breath.” Long, slim fingers cup at the hinge of his jaw and the back of his head. Mark turns him so that the only thing he can see is the corner of his grinning mouth, his trustworthy, familiar gaze. “Yes or no?”

After a deep breath: “yes.”

“It’s okay,” Mark tells him. His breath smells like rum and coke. His pinky is resting just against Jaebum’s throat. Jaebum wonders if he can feel how hard his heart is beating. “It’s just me.” 

He's right: it's just him. His best friend. The guy who told him about getting the crap beat out of him in the locker room when he was fifteen; the guy who rubbed his back when he was drunkenly projectile vomiting in a Waffle House parking lot. The guy he came to first the morning after realizing his world might not be as clear-cut as he thought it was. The guy he’s spent three years laughing and crying and fighting with and leaning on. It’s just them.

“Yeah. Okay,” Jaebum says, settled. “Kiss me.” 

Jaebum only hears the sharp bark of Mark’s laugh, can only see Mark’s eyes crease and the tiniest sliver of a smile before he closes the gap between them and kisses him, slow and soft and wet.

Immediately, it’s different. Part of it is because he was halfway to hammered when he made out with Hyunwoo and Jinyoung, pressed in between wool coats and silk scarves, a rush of textures everywhere that had dizzied him enough to only hang on to the feeling of warmth and unfamiliar angles, and the way that Hyunwoo and Jinyoung had stared at him with twin indulgent looks afterwards.

He and Mark may have stumbled here all boozy but between episodes of _Gundam_ and chugging water and introspective panicking, Jaebum is almost completely sober. He can feel the brush of Mark’s stubble against his top lip and the way his long nose is pressing in close beside his own. Mark’s plush mouth is —

His mouth is open, just a little bit, just enough for the tip of his tongue to poke out and nudge at the seam of Jaebum’s lips. 

Jaebum’s hands seize in place, squeezing at the juts of Mark’s hip bones, which sets off a chain reaction: Mark gasps, squirming a little under the pressure; the squirm allows for some very direct contact between Mark’s ass and Jaebum’s dick, which is becoming shamefully interested in the entire thing; then Jaebum gasps, mortified by his dick, and Mark knowing he’s getting hard, and having had this dumb idea in the first place, and his entire existence. 

But Jaebum’s catfish gape isn’t useless — when he opens his mouth, Mark does not hesitate to lick right into it, sliding his slick tongue to rub against his own. He presses his fingertips into Jaebum’s jaw, holding him slack and open. 

The confident way he’s taking control of the situation makes Jaebum finally relax, give in, pliant and thrilled. It feels so, so good to have someone in his lap for the first time in a long while, kissing him with his neck craned; the fact that it’s Mark and he’s kissing him all hazy and hot makes it even better, easier.

Kissing Mark is unreasonably comfortable. He’s assertive but not sloppy about it, tongue licking carefully along Jaebum’s, swiping his lips and the roof of his mouth, smiling against him when the slow drags make Jaebum huff and hum. He’s light but not insubstantial on Jaebum’s thighs. It feels like he’s easing Jaebum into it, holding his hand as he ventures out into the unknown.

The door in his mind he almost always keeps closed creaks and unlocks.

He swallows and rubs his thumb over Mark’s hip, pressing the pad of it into his borrowed t-shirt, a shameless, needy voice in his head whispering, whining, asking for more.

The thumb must tell Mark his thoughts without Jaebum having to say anything. In the next instant, Mark is moving in his lap, holding the back of his head in both hands, sucking his bottom lip between pointy teeth. He bites into the flesh until it stings, and when Jaebum shivers from the pain he rocks his ass down against Jaebum’s crotch in a slow grind.

Jaebum groans, then shudders again when Mark lets his lip smack wetly back into place. “Hyu— _Mark.”_ He slides his hands around to the small of his friend’s back, hoping he won’t have to ask for Mark to know he’s desperate for more friction, more kissing and licking and biting, pulling him closer to sit him right over his half-hard cock in his sweats.

“Jaebum.” Mark sighs his name. It feels perilously close to unreal; it feels like he’s fallen into one of the sinful, secret dreams he never tells Mark about. But it’s happening. It’s happening fast: Mark is rolling his hips in little circles, bearing down, rubbing himself against Jaebum and he’s saying “your shirt, take your shirt off” so Jaebum does.

Mark leans back and does the same, tossing Jaebum’s dress of a sleep shirt to the side, baring a mile of sunkissed skin and pink nipples and a sparse happy trail down his abdomen. Unthinking, Jaebum brushes his fingers down it, fascinated, grinning when Mark’s stomach jumps and tenses and he huffs out a tickled laugh.

“Mark-hyung is so cuuute,” he taunts, baby-talking to him in Korean, nuzzling his jaw, nosing into the soft skin underneath. He leaves tender, shy kisses where he can feel Mark’s pulse tapping back against his lips.

He chuckles, running hands down the back of Jaebum’s head and down past his neck, fingers digging into the tense edges of his shoulder blades, ticking down his vertebrae like he’s counting them. “You realize I understand enough Korean to know you’re being a bad dongsaeng, right?” 

“Am not! I called you hyung, didn’t I?”

“Hmm. You did.” Mark pulls back again but drags Jaebum with him, tipping himself backwards to lay flat on the bed, catching Jaebum in the v of his legs. The sensation of so much of his bare skin against Mark’s is overwhelming; their chests knock when they breathe, and Jaebum gets distracted enough by the warm feeling he almost doesn’t hear Mark say “You should keep doing that. Calling me that.”

“All the time? Or just like,” Jaebum gulps. “Like, tonight? Do you...like that?”

Mark shrugs as much as he can when he’s pressed down into the mattress. “Sure. But you like it more.” He hooks his leg around the back of Jaebum’s and notches his foot around his calf, tangling them together. “I heard you let it slip. It’s kinda hot.” Mark hitches his hips forward against Jaebum’s thigh, rubs the hard line of his cock there. 

Jaebum shivers. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Mark smirks, squeezing his thighs around Jaebum’s hips. “It’s like you almost called me ‘daddy’ on accident.”

Jaebum gapes, flustered, flushing hot down his neck. “I wouldn’t! Do...that!”

Mark raises a disbelieving eyebrow, but doesn’t question him on it. Instead, he pulls Jaebum unnecessarily tight to his chest, crushing him in his arms. Jaebum can’t even ask _what the hell_ before Mark is flipping the two of them over, using their tangled legs as leverage. “Hyung — !”

Mark smiles angelically from above him. His hair is staticky around his head like a blonde halo. “Yes, baby?” He doesn’t wait for Jaebum to stop sputtering to dive down into kissing his neck, flattening his tongue against Jaebum’s skin in wide, warm stripes. 

Jaebum sighs, heat curling and coiling in his gut, twisting around itself and into his chest. It pulls tight around his lungs when Mark opens his mouth and runs the edge of his teeth there, burns when he uses his tongue and teeth together on a spot under his jaw that makes him quiver and gasp. 

He runs his hands down the sides of Mark’s long torso and across his back, clutching at him when his mouth demands it. The pricks of his teeth against Jaebum’s neck heighten every feeling; the pinches of pain make his hair stand on end, make his skin more sensitive, make him more aware of Mark’s hips rocking his hardness into Jaebum’s leg.

“Hyung,” he gasps again, before he can think about it, pushing a hand into his hair, “I need — ” It’s hard to say it even when he can feel it all over, the want leaking out of his pores and settling into the stifling air around them. “Please,” he says faintly, “Mark.”

Mark’s lips are puffy-swollen when he leans up to look at him. “What do you need, Jaebummie? Tell me.”

Jaebum can feel his face burning for the umpteenth time in the last 12 hours. “I want more.” After starting, it’s like a dam breaking — it all flows out, encouraged by the way Mark’s staring down at him, mouth hanging open. “Hyung, take your pants off, please, God.”

Mark only spares a half-second to nod, agreeing, before they’re a flurry of movement, shucking their sweats in a messy tangle. Jaebum can feel his heart pounding as he slips his boxers down his thighs. He winces when his cock slaps loudly against his stomach.

“Fuck,” Mark says, sounding winded. He runs his thin fingers down Jaebum’s thighs, across the growing-in stubble around his cock, across the barely-there lines cut across his abdomen. “Baby. You’re so gorgeous.”

Jaebum wants to hide suddenly, shy all over again, but Mark surprises him for the millionth time — this time by taking Jaebum’s cock fully in hand. He counters Jaebum’s strangled cry of surprise with more explicit sweetness: “Wow, Jaebummie, even your cock is nice. So pretty and thick.” He tightens his fist, works it up and down Jaebum slow and hot and unbearable.

“Hng,” he manages in response, head lolling back into the sheets. Something about the way Mark is talking to him — about him — is as overwhelming as his confident touch. Combined they lure him in like a bee to a flower, drops of sugar in front of him, tempting, trapping. He’s caught in the syrup of Mark’s words and hands, leaking precome over the head of his cock and down Mark’s fingers.

“Oh, wow. Getting so wet for me, baby. Does it feel good?” He swipes the ring of his pointer finger and thumb quick and tight under the head.

Jaebum shudders. “Fuck, yes it does.”

Mark laughs, light and breathless. “Good. Do you have lube?”

Mouth suddenly dry, Jaebum gulps. “Yeah.”

Mark’s grin widens. “Good.”

\--

“I’m gonna fuck you now.”

Jaebum’s heartbeat roars in his ears. “Okay.” He watches Mark roll a condom down his long cock in tense silence, fingernails scratching at the sheets, nerves suddenly back in full force now that Mark isn’t fingering him to his wit’s end.

Those cool fingers close around his wrist. His hand smushes down into the mattress. “Jaebum.” At the call, his eyes bolt to Mark’s, and he’s staring down at Jaebum in the quiet, serious way he gets when he just knows that something is wrong, when he can sense it in the line of Jaebum’s shoulders or the smallest twitch in his face. “Do you want me to?”

“I — ” Jaebum starts.

Does he want this to stop? Is it actually too much for him to go this far with his best friend just to prove something to himself? What if everything changes? 

Jaebum thinks about the uncertainty of the past few months; the way he would wake up gasping and anxious and shaking, the way he walked around his parents’ house over spring break like a ghost, mind always somewhere else. He doesn't want everything to be the same. Maybe it would be okay if it all changed. “Yeah, Mark. I trust you.”

“I’m glad,” Mark says, soft, steady. “I’ll take care of you. I promise.”

Jaebum wiggles his wrist in Mark’s grip. “Can I — will you hold my hand?” he asks in a small voice, acutely aware of his vulnerability.

The look on Mark’s face is impossibly fond when he agrees and threads their fingers together. Jaebum watches with bated breath as his other hand goes down, down, diving to where it was before and rubbing light against his entrance. It feels so nice, Mark’s thin fingers delicate and fluttering where they were just demanding and stretching. Jaebum lets his neck relax, eyes sliding closed on a sigh.

Then...then he can feel Mark moving closer. A light bit of pressure that grows, expands, opens, aches, and it kind of — “ah, it — wait, hyung.” Jaebum doesn’t open his eyes just yet, breathing hard, but he can feel Mark’s concern coming off of him in waves, in the tense squeeze on his hand. It hurts, a little. He’s never done this, and it doesn’t sting but the slow stretch of his hole is so foreign that his brain doesn’t know what to make of it.

Jaebum opens his eyes just halfway, suspended on a wire. Mark’s looking down at him with nothing but care in his eyes; no disappointment, nothing else but worry. “Okay?”

The air in his room seems so thin. Every wretched gulp of it does so little that Jaebum feels lightheaded. “Yeah. Just — slow.”

Mark cracks a fond smile. “Of course.”

He goes. Impossibly slow. Jaebum’s eyelids flutter again as he gets filled up, mouth dropping open. Mark’s hot, wet, jagged breaths against his collarbones are the only things that betray his affectedness.

It feels like an eternity before the skin of Mark’s hips meets Jaebum’s ass. “You good?” Mark asks, sweet and deep in his chest.

Jaebum gurgles. He can't make his mouth form any actual words when he can feel every solid inch of Mark's cock inside of him, pressure from all sides. “Ah — guh- _uh_ ,” he manages. His own cock is flagging, drooping on his stomach, but Jaebum cannot bring himself to give a single shit about it when he feels so entirely overwhelmed. It’s unlike anything he’s ever felt. It’s not like Mark’s fingers, and it’s not like the times he’s explored, tenderly, with his own hand. It’s all-consuming.

Mark smiles, flashing his dangerous teeth before diving down to nuzzle into his neck. “You're doing so well, Bummie,” he says into the paper-thin skin over his Adam's apple. Mark presses sweet kisses and nips of teeth there, deathly still, giving him time to adjust, as something in the pit of Jaebum's stomach grows and yearns and claws at him with need.

“Hyung,” Jaebum breathes. “Move.” When Mark looks up at him, eyes intense and burning, Jaebum's breath hitches again, catches, and he hears himself asking “please, please” without thinking about it. His words comes out high, needy — more desperate than he's ever felt when he's been fucking someone else. Because it's different. Distantly, he wonders if it's always like this, if —

Mark must have pulled out a little, because he's rocking his hips back into Jaebum and it forces his voice reedy and choked-off, wordlessly crying out. He's so full. _"Oh, god."_ He's filled to the brim with Mark; every breath he takes he can feel his cock, like it's taken up all the excess space in his body.

“Yeah, you like it?” Mark asks, an edge of something mean and pushy on his tongue. He is slow and careful and sweating at his temples and the hollow of his neck. He looks fucking gorgeous. “How does it feel?”

“It feels so guh-good, hyung.” 

“Good, you’re doing so good, Jaebum,” Mark murmurs. “You love feeling my cock inside you, don’t you? You’re loving this. Getting fucked on your back all pretty and open for hyung.”

Hearing Mark call himself _hyung,_ all casual filth, makes his dick twitch and revive. Jaebum opens his mouth to object, but Mark pairs it with a slick thrust so deep into him all that comes out is a pathetic mewl. Mark grins where he looms over him, pupils blown-out huge, eyes dancing like he knows exactly what Jaebum’s thinking. It wouldn’t be the first time. “I knew you would love taking cock.”

“You thought about this?” Jaebum gasps out, breathless, squirming when Mark does something circular with his hips.

For the first time since starting this, Jaebum notices red creeping up his friend’s neck, peeking out at the tips of his ears. “Maybe.” He squeezes Jaebum’s hand before letting go to manhandle Jaebum’s left leg up and to the side, pressing his thigh toward his chest. The angle makes the next pass of Mark’s cock feel unholy in its pressure, boiling hot in Jaebum’s belly, and they groan together. “I mean, fuck, Jaebum, I’m only human. You’re stupid hot. I couldn’t _not_ think about it.”

Jaebum hums, flattered. “I — oh — ” he finds himself saying, tongue spilling out words he didn’t know he would ever be willing to admit. His face is hot. “I thought about it too.”

Mark smirks, biting his bottom lip between his teeth as he moves and fucks into Jaebum. “Yeah? What did you think about?” He presses his thumbs into the soft skin on the inside of Jaebum’s hips, spreads his legs further with casual insistence. “Bet you thought it would be different.”

In all of those guilty dreams and half-formed fantasies he always imagined lovely, delicate Mark waiting and willing underneath him, not the other way around. Mark’s red mouth gaping open on a gasp or on his cock; his long legs wrapped around Jaebum’s waist. Jaebum sucking bruises into the long column of his throat.

Not that he had anything to complain about now. Mark is all tightly controlled motion, precise like he is with almost everything else, and he’s moving in and around Jaebum so carefully it almost hurts. Like he’s almost unaffected. “I thought I would be fucking you.”

“Oh,” Mark says, taken aback like he didn’t really expect an answer. He swallows hard, dark eyes trained on Jaebum when he hitches a little sigh just thinking about it.

“I wanted to bend you over your stupid gaming desk and fuck you in the middle of one of your stupid gaming matches.” That was the image that crawled out of his psyche and stuck with him the most, for whatever reason, the thing that he dreamed about, the imaginary thing that inspired more than a couple jerking off sessions: Mark with his ass in the air, gripping the edge of the cheap balsawood furniture with his headset only half-off so all of his co-op friends would be subjected to the slick sound of Jaebum fucking him from behind while he cursed in every language he knew.

Mark makes a choked-off sound in his throat, slow pace broken by a sudden, shaky stab of his cock that knocks the wind out of Jaebum. “Fuck. You really did think about it. You want them to hear you fucking me?” His next few thrusts shift Jaebum up the sheet, fabric made damp by his sweat. It feels like his whole anatomy is shifting around, accommodating Mark’s, letting him sink into the deepest parts of him, prodding at the tenderness inside. “Want me to beg for your cock in front of all those strangers?”

“Yes, fuck, Mark,” Jaebum cries out, cheeks burning, dick throbbing. “Yeah, yeah, I want to. Want to fuck you, want everyone to hear it.” 

Delighted, Mark hums. “Maybe next time?”

The implication makes the back of Jaebum’s neck tingle, makes tension crackle in his chest, makes him want to wriggle and whine and ask for _moremoremore_. So he does. Begs for it: “please, please, please.”

Mark gives it to him.

He folds Jaebum like a pretzel, notches his shoulders under Jaebum’s knees and leans into him so that his hamstrings strain and burn. When Mark fucks into him again, it shoots off sparks behind Jaebum’s eyes, zaps him like an electric outlet, tingling all the way down to his fingers. 

His friend’s voice is raw and deep. “Shit, you feel so good. You’re so tight,” he says, words slurry. Mark pushes more of his body weight into Jaebum’s legs, pulling him soft and stretchy like taffy, angling so that when he fucks him quicker and harder each thrust makes Jaebum whine, thighs aching. They frame the severe angles of Mark’s face in shadow, but Jaebum can still see his focused eyes, the way his pink mouth is open and gasping, the glistening line of skin from his neck to his tense, flexing stomach. 

A stream of “ah, ah, ah, hyung” dribbles out from his gaping mouth. Every thrust pushes him higher and higher into the clouds, going lightheaded, gasping at the way Mark pummels his prostate. “Mark, _ah,_ I love feeling your cock inside me.” His spine tingles at the admission. It’s not wrong. So he keeps going: “I want to do this all the time, fuck; I want to ride you, _hyung.”_

“God,” Mark pants against the hinge of his knee, “you’re so fucking sexy, Jaebummie. Whatever you want, baby boy.” Jaebum can hear the slapping of their skin together more than he can feel it now. “We can do anything you want.” With his legs over Mark’s shoulders and his ass in his lap, blood rushes to his head, makes him woozy, makes every bit of praise ring in his head.

“Hyung,” Jaebum moans. “Hyung, please, will you come on me?” He arches in Mark’s grip, searching again, knowing he got what he wanted when Mark’s length pushes and slides right against his prostate and makes his skin shiver, toes curling in midair. “Come on me, come on my stomach.”

Mark hisses a “fuck” with feeling, hands clenching around Jaebum’s thighs nearly too tight, pressure almost painful against the tendons. Every little rough thing that Mark does sends another current of heat up Jaebum’s spine; it adds another edge to getting fucked that Jaebum didn’t even realize he was missing out on before. “Yes, Bummie, I’ll come on you.”

He moves Jaebum again, spreads his legs out to the side, sliding his hands around his calves, leans up so he can thrust from his knees. He feels pinned, spread out flush for display like a butterfly in a glass case, utterly entrapped. Mark’s whole chest is flush with color, heaving with effort. “Good, good, good, baby,” he keeps gasping, pushing the two of them forward, closer and closer to the edge.

“Baby, baby, I l— ” Mark chants, “fuck, I — " He pulls out. 

Jaebum wants to sob at the loss, whining, crying out as Mark lets him free of his clutches to wrap a hand around himself, flinging the condom to the side. Mark’s cock peeks red and angry from inside his fist in the crux of Jaebum’s legs, then in an instant, Mark’s sighing — _“Jaebum”_ — and coming in hot spurts across Jaebum’s stomach.

It’s filthy but Jaebum wants it, wants it all; he scoops fingers through the mess on him and sticks them into his mouth, sucking greedily at the bitter taste. He meets Mark’s eyes through the haze of approaching orgasm, and Mark _snarls,_ pushing at the back of his hand to stuff Jaebum’s fingers deeper into his mouth, crushing his wrist in his grip. He palms at the come on Jaebum’s stomach, then —

Jaebum wails around his fingers when Mark’s sticky-wet hand wraps around his cock, jerks him off with brutally efficient strokes, pulling Jaebum all the way through his haze, up and over the highest high to come with a squeal, eyes rolling in his head. His whole body feels like it’s unraveling as it happens, every muscle and tendon going limp like a puppet with its strings cut.

Mark only gives Jaebum about two seconds to recover before he collapses on top of him, panting. Jaebum extricates his hand from between his lips, flops it down onto the back of Mark’s head where he’s huffing into his neck.

“Jesus.” Jaebum blinks up at the ceiling. He feels like he got punched in the stomach a dozen times, but like, in a good way. “Is it always like that?”

Mark shakes his head, hair tickling under Jaebum’s chin. “Definitely not.”

“Guess we got lucky?” Jaebum tries, inexplicably nervous when Mark leans up to meet his eyes.

He doesn’t have to be — Mark’s smile is soft and familiar, his eyes full of affection and fondness and lo— something else. Jaebum’s heart leaps, runs sprints like it hasn’t just recovered from doing the same. “I guess so.”

Jaebum tangles his fingers in the hair growing long at the nape of Mark’s neck. “Did you mean it?” His head’s a jumble, completely messed up; now that the door between his attraction to his best friend and the rest of him is flung open, what is he supposed to do? “I mean, did you mean it when you said — ”

“I meant all of it.” Mark says it slow, serious. He almost looks sad, and it blows through Jaebum like a hole’s been punched out of his chest. “I meant everything.”

The tender, gentle way he held Jaebum’s face in his hands when he kissed. The carefulness of his hands and his hips in the beginning. The restraint he had until Jaebum begged him to let it go. The worshipful words he poured out like they were unlimited.

The way he had rushed to Jaebum’s side in an instant at the party, the way he said _"let’s go home”_ without a single second thought, the way he was there for every single moment of terror and joy and laughter and sadness for the past three years — how even if he wasn’t there, he was the first to hear about it.

“Me too,” Jaebum says. “I meant it all, too.”

Mark smiles, shy and hopeful. Jaebum doesn’t try to stop himself from doing the same.

\--

“Jaebum!”

Jaebum looks up from his book at the call to see Jinyoung a little way down the main sidewalk through campus. He’s waving jovially, like a dad — he’s also dressed like a dad, with a sweater vest and everything. Jaebum smiles back, waiting for the familiar tightness in his chest that comes with seeing Jinyoung or his boyfriend or worse, the two of them combined.

Even as Jinyoung sits down at the other end of the bench, it doesn’t come. “How are you? I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever.” His eyelashes flutter prettily in the slight breeze that comes down the walkway. His gaze is analytical; perceiving. What he sees, Jaebum wishes he knew. “Ever recover from that tequila shot?” he asks, teasing but not unkind.

Jaebum barks a laugh. “Yeah, well, actually — ”

“Baby,” a low, familiar voice accompanies the hand on the back of his neck. _Now,_ Jaebum feels a shiver. “Were you waiting for me? So romantic.”

Jinyoung’s eyes widen cartoonishly. He gets his grip in a snap, though, sharing a warm smile with Mark when he swings an arm around Jaebum’s shoulders and perches almost in his lap. “It looks like you’re doing great,” he says in real earnest. “Hyung says he misses you at the gym, though. We should all hang out sometime.” His eyes flit between the two of them, something hot and curious in his glance. He blushes when he realizes Jaebum’s staring right at him.

Jaebum meets eyes with his boyfriend. He doesn’t miss the wicked glint there. “Yeah. That sounds great.”

**Author's Note:**

> come be my friend elsewhere on the interwebz [@sunnyseunie](https://twitter.com/sunnyseunie) on twitter!!!


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